 Hi, my name is Monty Johnson, I teach philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and this is the second of my lectures on Albert Camus, The Plague, La Peste, originally published in 1947. I'm using the translation of Stuart Gilbert published in 1948. So part two of five, and in the overall structure, after the introductory part one, which explains that the book is a narrative chronicle of events over approximately a year of a plague affecting a French colony. The main characters had been introduced as the main events were narrated in a fairly linear and chronological fashion. In part two, which begins with the city gates being closed since plague has officially been declared. At this point, the narration slows considerably and becomes much less linear. There is in depth character development in several different ways of Rio, Tarot, Rem, Bear, Grand, and Father Pantelou in their the descriptions of their initial responses to the extraordinary circumstances of the plague. And especially towards the end of this part, we get the most explicitly kind of philosophical reflections. And this is by far the longest part, almost half of the entire book. And so these detailed descriptions of characters are going to set up various changes that happen quite a bit more rapidly in the subsequent parts and through fewer words depict large changes of character. But this part is very long on description and philosophical digression. Now the first thing that's described is the misery of the stay at home orders and the effects of the quarantining of the city, which is explicitly compared both to exile and prison. That is being forcibly confined in a certain place like being in prison. And yet, even though that's in your own home, feeling like everything in your home and around it has changed so that you're in a foreign place or exiled from your actual home. In part one, the commercial and mercantile character of the town or on were emphasized. Now the description of the abrupt cessation of business activity is used to represent the despondency of the citizens. The only businesses still making money are those selling alcohol or movie theaters, which are pathetically packed, despite only showing reruns. And eventually the infrastructure of the whole town, its hospitals, schools, cemeteries, churches, stadiums, and even subway cars are repurposed and reconceived in order to deal with the plague. So we see this transformation of the environment and the world around them, and this violent transformation, how the various characters respond to it. The people as a whole are also described. Those many of them are cut off from loved ones that they thought they would only be temporarily separated from. And these make individual appeals for exceptions to the travel restrictions. But those are always denied by the officials. And so they suffer for this and their sufferings become depersonalized because their complaints and sufferings all pool together. Everybody is in the same boat. Everybody has a reason for this not to be happening and a desire for it not to be happening. But no exceptions can be made. There is also described universal frustration in communication, whether it's brief, like in the form of telegrams, so literally telegraphic speech, or when people at length attempt to hand write love letters, all of these attempts seem to fail. Even consolation from one's neighbors become impossible. You try to unburden yourself about something you're suffering to your neighbor, but the response inevitably is experiences hurtful and leaves you regretting that you even mentioned it to them. So people are simultaneously tied to one another, but also cut off from one another. People try to improve themselves and their relations to others, such as their missing partners or parents or children, and they try to become the parents that they never were, or treat their parents like they haven't to this point, or treat their wives or husbands differently. But the increased concern for these people actually has a compounding kind of depressive effect and people prove unable to authentically carry this out. And the plague is compared to bringing the entire town into a kind of exile, which again is a paradoxical idea. They're trapped in the town and yet exiled from it. So one either dwells in the past or the has a desire to speed up the present. But there's no clear imagination of the future possible, or to the extent that it is this imagination is rapidly overtaken by fear. So quote, hostile to the past, impatient of the present and cheated of the future. We are very much like those whom men's justice or hatred forces to live behind prison bars. By the way, the an alternative working title for the plague at one point was the prisoners. And the idea was going to be that we're focused on the prisoners, the people who are cast into the situation and trapped where they are. And that title would have brought out, I think, even better than the title of the plague, the focus on the differential effects on different kinds of characters as a result of the fundamental cause of the plague. Now, in at first, there is intense speculation about how long the plague will last. But people finally get over doing that because they will bitterly resign themselves to some finite period of suffering, but then inevitably be disappointed when it's realized that no end or limit can be imposed on the plague. As it were, it operates on its own time. And you can't predeterminate beforehand. And so they quote drifted through life rather than lived the prey of aimless days and sterile memories dwelling in the past and unable to escape an unending future which does not allow them to imagine an ending present which does not allow them to imagine any future. Now, the character developments, first of all, fundamentally two unhappy characters, unhappy philosophically unsuccessful characters contoured. His personality is increasingly disturbing and ultimately climaxes in his self destruction. But until the last part of the book, he actually seems to be getting ever fitter and better. By contrast to everyone else in the town, he seems to be flourishing in an environment where everybody else walks around as if under a death sentence. And it's initially unclear why this is, but it turns out that he's happy to be escaping justice. His secret is a crime in the past, which the absorbing circumstances of the present allow him to temporarily escape. But in the end, he's driven mad and into a suicidal frenzy by his own fear of punishment and death. Rambeir, the journalist is miserable upon being separated from his lover and girlfriend. And he feels emotionally trapped here in Iran. So he, for example, requests that Dr. Rio give him a certificate stating that he doesn't have the disease so that he can leave. Of course, Rio refuses because even though he sympathizes with the desire to rejoin a separated lover, recall that Rio had sent his wife to a mountain sanitarium. Rio complies with the letter of the law. The law was the law. Plague had broken out and he could only do what had to be done. Rambeir eventually will overcome his obsessive drive to escape and actually improves as a person by using reason and focusing on helping others instead of dwelling on his own passions. But for a long time and increasingly through part two, but then into other parts of the book, he is frustrated as he's driven by an obsessive desire and not using his reason. By contrast to very different, as it were, happy characters, philosophically happy characters. Grand, his constant talkativeness bears out the image of the citizens that are dwelling in their past. He starts out as somebody dwelling on regrets about his ex-wife, a failure that he can't seem to put behind him. He's an amateur writer who's literally stuck on the first sentence of a romantic novel that he seems obviously incapable of writing because of his lack of genuine feeling and experience with the subject matter. But as he diverts more and more of his focus away from those who have been more fortunate than him in his career and his love life and so forth, and he focuses instead on the plague and its victims, he improves as a person. Eventually, this is symbolized by his overcoming and breaking through writer's block. The steadiness of his character throughout and his straightforward humility, usefulness and efficiency in the context of the crisis allows him not only to survive, he actually contracts the plague but survives it, but he actually flourishes after this. And the narrator at one point describes him as an enigmatic mystery, but also as the ironic hero of the novel. Ironic because the narrator explicitly rejects the very idea of heroes. And he says, you know, we normally would think of them as extraordinary, super powered people. But in fact, it's just the reliable person who does his job, and has the courage to stand his line in the context of a crisis that is the closest thing we have to such a hero, ironically. Now, Tarot is the other kind of happy character. A traveler or even wanderer who like Rambeir is accidentally exiled in Iran. But unlike Rambeir, he courageously takes the initiative of setting up squads of volunteers to help with the plague and high risk jobs, like transporting dead bodies and monitoring affected areas and so forth. So he acts as a kind of moral conscience, goading others to join these volunteer efforts, risky though they are. Some he's unsuccessful in recruiting like Cotard. But others, he's successful, grand and Rambeir. And his recruitment of them and their agreement to help with that eventually improves them and helps them. Tarot's own motive is self consciously philosophical. He is trying to avoid doing harm to any other being whatsoever as comes out in a long philosophical discourse in a later part. In particular, he's concerned about having any connection with death or murder. But he remains a subtle observer and judge of the actions of others in the novels. So his notes serve as a basis for large parts of the narration. And he constantly takes delight in the ironies that he observes and records. Now the first discussion of religion comes when after the first month of the plague, which ends gloomily, and there's a kind of violent recrudescence of the epidemic that coincides with a dramatic sermon preached by Father Pantelou. Father Pantelou is represented as being a serious scholar. He works on ancient inscriptions, for example, and he's a thinker. So he gave a famous series of lectures on modern individualism. He's described as a quote, champion of Christian doctrine at its most precise and purest. So he's a serious intellectual who dwells completely with reason on abstract things and has accepted a set of dogmatic commitments on the basis of his reasoning. And we see his reasoning ultimately challenged and began to unravel in other parts of the book. Now the commercial people of Iran, like everywhere, were not particularly disposed to religion, per se, but plague had induced in them a curious frame of mind as remote from indifference as from fervor, the best name to give it perhaps might be objectivity. So they have a kind of, well, it can't do any harm. So I may as well show up to church just in case there's anything to this. And so they listen to and are subjected to the sermon. Now the narrator and tarot compare the religious responses to something like this to the ancient Chinese practice of playing tambourines to placate the demon of the plague. And they ask whether this religion and this religious response has any chance of being more effective. But at the same time they raised the skeptical question of whether the prophylactic measures and the medicine that they're undertaking can be any more effective. And there have certainly been times where the medical response to plague was no more effective than the religious response or any other response to the plague. And the characters at this point wonder whether they are in such a situation. Now, Pantaloos sermon begins by saying, calamity has come upon you and you deserved it. And this is the gist of his whole discourse that they are suffering a divine punishment. The plague in Egypt is described in Exodus that was wielded in order to strike down the enemies of God is compared to what's happening to them. He threatens that Lucifer shining like evils very self will strike down unjust people with the plague and that no earthly power, not even the vaunted might of human science can stop it. So he sets up religious concerns as the primary one and acts to instill a fear of death and a fear of God. God, he says, must be placated by spending more time worshiping him and not just on Sundays. He identifies the plague with their salvation then as if it's a good thing, quote, the same pestilence which is slaying you works for your good and points your path. He even expresses partial admiration for the Abyssinian Christians who, quote, saw in the plague assure and God sent means of winning eternal life. And so they inflicted themselves with the plague. And he says he doesn't exactly encourage that but he praises the zeal of those monks and he concludes with what seems like a very half hearted prayer for love. Now the predictable response to this is panic from which it takes a while to recover. So the immediate effect of the sermon is to increase fear for everyone now fears not just death itself but also divine punishment. And so mental illnesses on the rise throughout the town as an episode in the street with a staggering violent madman reveals in chapter 12. Now the clerk grand the bureaucrat earlier who is described as the kind of man unaffected by plague dutifully does his job compiling statistics and shows himself unexpectedly useful like a key essential worker. He seems to be kept level by his hobby of writing or rather his obsessive rewriting of the first line of a novel. Actually, it describes an uncommonly tranquil and beautiful scene which stands in contrast to the horrific scenes unfolding around them. And as Rio reads his draft, he has the feeling of the town being a world apart. And yet grand is meticulously documenting the infection and death rates. And so using this literary preoccupation as a means of diversion and escape. Now, Rambear meanwhile is shown trying to leave the city. He's coping with the spreading panic by pursuing every means of leaving the town, trying to appeal to various officials but constantly coming up short. He observes that these officials are competent people with good intentions. But as regards the plague, their competence was practically nil, he says. He classifies them as into various groups like the sticklers, the consolers, the VIPs, the triflers, the red tape merchants, the overworked and much harassed officials. And by far the greatest number of the traditionalists who just send him on to another office or recommend another method of dealing with it. So kind of bureaucratic nightmare. His hope is raised when the prefect sends him a form to filling out to fill out asking him about his identity, family, employment information and so forth. He assumes that they're drawing up a list of people to exempt from restrictions. But it turns out to be plans for the contingency in the event of his death. They want next of kin information and undoubtedly financial information in order to recover the unexpected costs of burial. Now his reaction to this is despondency. He spends his time wandering from cafe to cafe, a mere shade among shadows, and spends time at the abandoned railway station fantasizing about impossible travels while looking at timetables and posters. The large interior space of this empty railway station can be compared and contrasted with the interior space of the cathedral, which just was described as being packed and stuffy on the occasion of Father Pantelou's sermon. Now, in chapter 14, a startling increase in the death toll accompanies the oncoming hot summer weather. And the result of this is profound discouragement. Many people remain indoors and never go outside. Many others do go outside, refuse to socially distance. They defy official orders, requiring local officials to constantly take new measures, enacting new restrictions and regulations. And there's a stark contrast between the outdoor, where we see scorching sun and growing lawlessness, and the indoor spaces where shade drawn darkness is affecting helplessness and resignation. The plague had killed all colors and vetoed pleasure, he writes. Now, Thoreau's recollections are then reported through the end of this part, and those towards the end seem very Epicurean, as do his subsequent conversations with his friend, Rio, or so I will interpret him in the next slides. So in Thoreau's journal, there is a passage that I've put up here on the slide, which contains several elements that are interesting to think of in relation to Epicureanism. Quote, at the start of the Great Heat, for some unacertained reason, the evenings found the streets almost empty, but now the least ripple of cooler air brings an easing of the strain, if not a flutter of hope, then all stream out into the open to drug themselves with talking, start arguing or love-making, and in the last glow of sunset, the town, freighted with lovers two by two and loud with voices, drifts like a homeless sheep into the throbbing darkness. In vain, a zealous evangelist with a felt hat and flowing tie threads his way through the crowd, crying out, God is great and good, come unto him. On the contrary, they all make haste towards some trivial objective that seems of more immediate interest than God. In the early days, when they thought this epidemic was much like other epidemics, religion held its ground, but once these people realized their instant peril, they gave their thoughts to pleasure, and all the hideous fears that tramp, that stamp their faces in the daytime, are transformed in the fiery, dusty nightfall in a sort of hectic eggs alteration, an unkempt freedom, fevering their blood, and I too am no different, but what matter, death means nothing to men like me, it's the event that proves them right. So the first thing is the descriptions of the easing of pain and the easing of strain and people using talk and discussion as a kind of therapy, and arguing and befriending people is a way of coping with the situation. They do not take notice and do not take consolation from the religious resources, and so the the cries and the exhortations of the evangelist go unheard, religion even begins to fail to be observed at all, and people become preoccupied with a more primitive and basic concern, and that is pleasure, seeking some kind of pleasure to relieve them from the pain and distress and anxiety that they're experiencing on an everyday basis. And so they, in this context, death means nothing to them, and it means nothing to tarot specifically because one has to concentrate on living and surviving in this situation. Now Epicurean aspects of Rio's arguments and his critique of religion. As the plague worsens, the Bobo's harden and refuse to burst, and the plague is turning from bubonic plague to mnemonic plague, tarot visits Rio, and they discuss the fact that the plague is getting out of hand, how the sanitary department is totally unequipped and understaffed to handle the situation, the prefect refuses to compel help and won't even ask for voluntary help, they're short on imagination, officialdom can never cope with something really catastrophic, he says. Now the situation is so desperate that the city is actually considering using prison labor, but tarot who is vehemically and philosophically opposed to the death penalty, and how he sees that this would essentially be condemning forcing people to work in the context of a plague is an imposition of a kind of death penalty on them, so he offers to form a voluntary group of helpers in order to prevent others from committing this kind of murder. The doctor, having no choice, accepts his offer, but he reminds tarot of the risk and wants to see if he's serious about understanding the risk, and this prompts a discussion between the two men, tarot and rio, about pantalous sermon and about religion in general. Now rio rejects the idea of collective punishment of the plague being a divine punishment, rejects it out of hand, he says, Christians sometimes say that sort of thing without really thinking it, they're better than they seem, he says, but tarot asks, however you think, like pantaloo, that the plague has its good side because it opens men's eyes and forces them to take thought, and rio responds, well, so does every other ill that flesh is heir to. What is true of all the evils in the world is true of the plague as well, it helps men rise above themselves. Al the same, when you see the misery it brings you'd need to be a madman or a coward or stone blind to give in tamely to the plague. So all illnesses improve us in the sense that they force us to deal with it, but that should not, we should not try to convert that into a kind of theodicy and apology for the fact that it's happened and the fact that it's apparently been imposed by an all powerful God. So explaining why he doesn't say that he believes in God, rio says, quote, pantaloo is a man of learning, a scholar, he hasn't come into contact with death, that's why he can speak with such assurance of the truth with the capital T, but every country priest who's heard a man grasping for breath on his death bed thinks as I do, he'd try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its excellence. So the purpose of therapy is not to further scare people and make them think they are responsible for this natural catastrophe that's happened to them, but to use knowledge however possible to relieve human suffering wherever that's possible and not to therefore to give into an accept and find an excuse or an apology for the plague because an apology or an excuse for the God that allowed it to happen, not to do that, but rather to concentrate everything on relieving human suffering. This prompts Taro to ask why do you show such devotion considering that you don't believe in God and he thinks that the answer to that question will help him to decide whether he will join and help form the voluntary sanitary squads and the response to this is very interesting. His face still in shadow Río says that he has already answered that if he believed in all powerful God he would cease curing the sick and leave that to him, but no one in the world believed in a God of that sort or not even Pantelou who believed that he believed in such a God and this was proved by the fact that no one ever threw himself on providence completely anyhow in this respect Río believed himself to be on the right road in fighting against creation as he found it. Ah, Taro remarked, so that's the idea you have of your profession more or less and the doctor came back into the light. So he interprets the point of medicine being to fight against what's happened by nature. If we look at the plague as a natural phenomenon then he's fighting with the art of medicine against the natural phenomenon because of the suffering that it brings to humans. If it's a divine phenomenon, if we have to uh if we should believe that first of all he denies that we should believe that that there is a God that would actually impose this as a punishment or as a purposeful thing or would even allow it to happen. But if we um uh so we should not believe that and instead we should use whatever human means possible to fight it as a natural phenomenon. This gives way to further Epicurean aspects of Rio's views on the world and death and God as he says in another passage from chapter 15 discussing his chosen profession of medicine. When I entered this profession I did it abstractly so to speak because I had a desire for it so he gives a very Epicurean motivation because it meant a career like another one that young men often aspire to perhaps too because it was particularly difficult for a worksman's son like myself so he pursues a kind of conventional uh path to success to fulfilling his basic needs and desires. But then he had to see people die. Do you know that there are some who refuse to die? Have you ever heard a woman scream never with her last gasp? Well I have and then I saw that I could never get hardened to it. I was young then and I was outraged by the whole scheme of things so the nature of things seemed off to him. Death alarmed him, caused him fear and he described this as being his thought but subsequently I grew more modest only I've never managed to get used to seeing people die. So that's a slightly un Epicurean aspect of him that he doesn't uh fully accept that death is nothing to him and in fact he struggles against it. Since the order of the world he says is shaped by death mightn't it be better for God if we refuse to believe in him and struggle with all our might against death without raising our eyes toward the heaven where he sits in silence. So he confines the divine to a sphere that is detached from an utterly unconnected with human affairs exactly as Epicurus does separating the gods from nature allowing them to remain tranquil but leaving humans free in their own sphere to use their art and intelligence and knowledge to counteract the natural phenomena that threaten them. Now Thoreau and Rios developing friendship also reveals some Epicurean aspect so Thoreau is impressed by what Rios just said and asked him who taught him all this and he replies that suffering has taught it to him it's reflections on suffering that brought him to these views much like the reflections on suffering were emotive for Epicurus and Lucretius. Thoreau announces his general agreement with Rios and says in fact you're perfectly right and they're friends who share an essentially Epicurean standpoint. The principal doctrines of Epicureanism are that number one don't fear God because the divine is totally unconcerned with human affairs and irrelevant to human reality. Second that death is nothing to us because it's total oblivion and there's no hope for an afterlife. We've seen that one of them Thoreau is much more accepting of this fact than Rios is at this point but Rios comes to accept this gradually more it seems as he ages as he described on the last slide. Suffering that his chronic can be managed and endured Epicurus teaches in his own example suffering that's acute and short lived is necessarily limited ultimately by death itself and this is borne out in the events of the novel itself. Now Thoreau devotes himself to avoiding wrongdoing of any kind whatsoever especially that that's connected with murder or death. Rios is more concerned with actively relieving suffering and preventing death so Thoreau has a more passive character while Rios is a constant man of action they're both devoted to relieving suffering especially that of others and the pursuit offers them both the opportunity to live tranquilly and to be successful and even happy characters even when the world is falling apart all around them. There is also an intellectualist aspect of the novel that is expressed most clearly in chapter 16 in the quotation the evil that's in the world always comes of ignorance and good intentions may do as much harm as malvalence if they lack understanding on the whole men are more good than bad that however isn't the real point but they are more or less ignorant and it is this that we call vice or virtue the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind and there can be no true goodness nor love without the utmost clear sightedness so all bad things come from ignorance and all good things come from knowledge therefore ignorance and knowledge are the causes respectively of all vice and virtue and thus all unhappiness and happiness. So to conclude reflect on the character developments of both happy and unhappy people the examples of happy people being rio, tarot, and grand and of unhappy people being rambar and kattard and of course as i just explained that corresponds to whether they have virtue or vice and whether they have virtue or vice corresponds to whether they are essentially ignorant or have knowledge. Now the narrator refuses to ascribe to the sanitary groups more than is there due that is the squadron set up by tarot to voluntarily fill in so that forced prison labor does not need to be used. He says those who enrolled in the sanitary squads they were called had no such great merit in doing as they did since they knew it was the only thing to do and the unthinkable thing would then have been to have not brought themselves to do it. These groups enabled our townsfolk to come to grips with the disease and convince them that now that plague was amongst us it was up to them to do whatever could be done to fight it since plague became in this way some men's duty it revealed itself as what it was that is the concern of all and so far so good but we do not congratulate a school master on teaching that to and to make for though we may perhaps congratulate him on choosing choosing a laudable vocation but then again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that to and to make for is punished with death so in a way just willingness to do your job willingness of healthcare professionals for example to do the essential and other essential workers to do what has to be done and what simply has to be done because it has to be done and for no other reason these people we would not normally congratulate we don't normally congratulate a school master for teaching two plus two equals four or a grocery worker for bagging groceries or a nurse for helping us treat a disease even our doctors but they're just doing their job but in the context of a crisis it becomes clear that just doing their job is essential to us and should be lauded now he the narrator observes that many fledgling moralists in those days were going about the town proclaiming there was nothing to be done and they should just bow to the inevitable and to row Rio and their friends might give one answer another but its conclusion was always the same that certitude that a fight must be put up in this way or that and that there must be no bowing down the essential thing was to save the greatest number of persons from dying and being doomed to unending separation and to do this there was only one resource to fight the plague there was nothing admirable about this attitude it was merely logical so it was merely logical meaning if you knew the facts about the situation then what should be done would follow immediately from them so understanding the facts overcoming ignorance having a kind of knowledge constitutes being good and being good constitutes the character being happy more than Rio or Thoreau grand is said to be the true embodiment of the courage that inspired the sanitary groups he does what he's asked to do and does what must be done because he understands that it must be done and he remains happy and is kept tranquil by his seemingly trivial literary pursuits so the narrator actually says quote if it is absolutely necessary that the narrative should include a hero the narrator commends to his readers with to his thinking perfect justice this insignificant and obscure hero who had to his credit only a little goodness of heart and seemingly absurd ideal this will render the truth it's due to the addition of two plus two it's some of four and to heroism the secondary place that rightly falls to it just after never before the noble claim of happiness so he achieves happiness because he is not ignorant he has knowledge and therefore virtue and therefore acts in a capable constant and steady way and so one who can be happy despite the world falling apart around them and the fear of death and the obsessive pursuit of desire of all the people around him that person who can be happy is the hero of the novel for what that's worth by way of contrast consider the situation of rambar and coddard and their unhappiness so chapter 17 is a counterpart to chapter 13 which described rambara's attempts to escape through legal channels chapter 17 focuses on his increasingly desperate struggles to escape and his entanglement with the criminal coddard rambara's motives are according to the narrator not virtuous though they had a kind of point that is they followed a kind of reason although it was a reason based in ignorance and therefore vice and ultimately produce unhappiness until a change of the character now rambara's frustration of failed connections and abandoned attempts to leave are described at great length and he's completely driven to get out by his passionate love for the woman from whom he has become separated he eventually enlists the help of the criminal coddard who helps him make arrangements to bribe guards at the main gate meanwhile rio and tarot continue to battle the plague rambara meets up with rio and asks him if the epidemic is getting out of hand to which rio responds the death graph is rising less deeply meaning the curve is being flattened still a lot of people are dying but this can be looked to as being some kind of hope but they lack the equipment and manpower so it's becoming a man-made disaster yes there's the natural disaster but it's how people are reacting to and rising to the occasion or failing to rise to the occasion that are constituting the next stage of the catastrophe rambara is concerned that rio realizes that he's leaving because of his passionate love for his girlfriend and wants to make sure he doesn't think it's because of his fear of death I don't think I'm a coward he lamely says and in fact his character is chiefly motivated by his passionate love and erotic desire for his girlfriend as opposed to coddard who is more clearly motivated by fear of punishment and death so awaiting an opportunity to escape rambara drinks with tarot and rio who mentioned that he could do good in the sanitary squads the voluntary groups he acknowledges this but says nothing further rio and tarot also try to recruit coddard to the sanitary squads but of course he selfishly refuses saying it's not my job they confront him with his criminality not threatening to turn him into the police but just challenging his motives but he doesn't change and part two ends with rambara calling the doctor and volunteering for the sanitary squad at least until he could find some way of getting out of town and rambara is motivated again by his chronic desire and erotic love coddard by the fear of death and punishment but the effect in both of these cases is blamable vicious behavior since it's earlier been established that ignorance is the cause of vice it follows that both of them lack knowledge they don't accept the facts of what the situation is from which the need to act in a certain way immediately follows so in the following parts one of them will learn and change and improve improve as a result in response to the circumstances while the other will sink further into vice and madness and death